Imagethief was a big fan of Spider-Man when he was growing up. I wasn't big into the cartoon (Spider-man! Spider-man! Does whatever a spider can!*) but I did read the comics for years. Spider-Man had a certain insouciant attitude with which I identified, a kind of ready wit in the face of adversity that I found inspiring. A geek with super powers. I did not, however, ever refer to my schoolyard archenemies as "chuckles". If you have super powers you can do that. If you're just some nerdy kid who likes to read comics it's a recipe for a beating or the dreaded whole-body trashcan inspection.

Spider-Man would, of course, never buy pirate DVDs (although I guess Venom would). Nor would any person who took him as a role model. Fortunately for me, I was smart enough not to take comic book superheroes as role models, even though I might have admired the attitude. Thus I am still able to avail myself of China's cornucopia of questionable content. I was thus interested to see this statement from Sony Pictures strenuously denying reports that there are pirate copies of Spidey III to be found on the streets of China:

LOS ANGELES, April 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Contrary to news reports about stolen copies of Spider-Man 3 being sold illegally on the streets in China, our investigation in China has revealed no case of the film being pirated to date.

Similar hoaxes and false alarms have occurred prior to the release of other major films. We have uncovered examples of Spider-Man 2 being sold in Spider-Man 3 boxes in China. But thus far we can find no instance where Spider-Man 3 has appeared on DVD.

In addition, after an initial investigation of online sites worldwide, we have so far found no pirated copies of Spider-Man 3 on the Internet.

This incident underscores one of the problems with piracy -- people who buy illegal movies often get ripped off themselves.

True enough. Nothing so infuriating as a dodgy pirate disk that just doesn't deliver. And Imagethief has no doubt that there are plenty of bogus boxes of Spidey III floating around, with disks of "Babe II: Pig in the City" or "Gazongas III: Peak Performance" or god knows what inside.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that the moralizing in the last paragraph will be a little lost on people. Downloadaholics in basements across America don't give a crap about DVDs in China. And Chinese audiences, if the release ever even makes it into Chinese, don't exactly have a stellar range of first-class, legal international content to choose from. Perhaps Sony would have been better served by reminding people that Spidey III will premiere in China a day before it does in the US, and people should be ready to get themselves down to their local movie theater to see it.

Assuming of course, they can find a theater in their neighborhood and sport up for the relatively extreme price tag that foreign movies command in China.

But in fairness to Sony, the Reuters story I linked to above doesn't seem to have much to go on. They start with a breathless lede on pirate copies of Spidey for sale in China, but concede in fourth paragraph that they one their intrepid reporter purchased doesn't actually work:

Chinese pirates beat Spider-Man to the punch

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's infamous movie pirates have done it again -- "Spider-Man 3" is already being sold on Beijing's streets almost two weeks ahead of its U.S. premier.

Costing just over $1 apiece, the pirated DVDs appear to be of the actual movie, complete with a picture of the hero in a new, black spider suit which he wears for some of the film.

There is even a warning on the back, printed in Chinese, against pirating the product.

But put the one bought on Tuesday in the machine, and it does not work -- a common problem with Chinese-made DVDs, which are often made with poor equipment in dingy backrooms.

So Chinese pirates have actually beaten anyone else in selling empty boxes claiming to be Spidey III, thus doing a masterful job of pranking foreign news organizations. This begs the question of whether a better headline for Reuters would have been, "Chinese pirates scam international news agency". It sure would have saved Sony's PR department some time.

But it's possible that Reuters simply had a spot of bad luck. Heck, everyone in China occasionally gets had by the pirate-man. The reason they all keep going back is that the marginal cost of failure is so low, at least until they begin end-user prosecutions in China.

But it does raise an interesting question: Spidey III has already premiered in Japan, and Hollywood is notoriously permeable when it comes to screeners, digital files and other not-for-distribution versions of movies. I wouldn't want to encourage immoral behavior (not sure it's actually criminal in China to buy pirate DVDs), but has anyone seen a confirmed pirate copy of Spidey III?

I ask out of purely scholarly interest. I'll go see it on the big screen. It's the least I can do to honor the memory of all those youthful weekends wasted leafing through yellowed pages of witty carnage.

*The Captain America cartoon of similar late-sixties vintage, produced by the same people I think, actually had a better theme song, I felt. By the way, Captain America is apparently dead.

 Don't buy that pirate disk, chucklehead!